Good Skin and the ‘Western Squint’ Give Godless a Natural Look

Since the dawn of cinema, and on radio before it, lawless battles of good and evil on a new frontier have captured audiences. Then, Godless offered something entirely new in the grief-stricken community of La Belle, New Mexico. A town with a nearly all-female population, following a town tragedy, becomes caught in the crossfire of rival outlaws and they prove to be even stronger than their male aggressors. Godless makeup designer Tarra Day has worked on all manner of Westerns including Appaloosa,

Merritt Wever Transitions From Loopy Nurse to Frontier Toughie in Godless

Merritt Wever has no idea why she was picked to play a tough frontier woman in Netflix western Godless, but the New York actress wasn’t about to ask questions when writer-director-creator Scott Frank came calling. “I don’t go nosing around like that,” says Wever, who won a 2013 Emmy co-starring in Nurse Jackie as Edie Falco’s sly, exuberant sidekick Zoey Barkow.

Standing in extreme contrast to Zoey, Wever’s Emmy-buzzed portrayal of Mary Agnes McNue celebrates a gun-wielding bisexual badass who defends the frontier town of LaBelle in 1884 after all the menfolk get killed in a catastrophic mining accident.

Sound Editors Harness Horses, Wind & Gunshots for Netflix’s Western Godless

When it comes to designing sound for westerns, seven-time Oscar nominee Wylie Stateman keeps his ears attuned to wind, horses, gunshots and what he calls “the ride up and the ride out.” Speaking from his Twenty Four Seven Sound studio in Topanga Canyon near L.A., Stateman says, “You need to capture the sense of the countryside and traveling by horseback because that’s what makes a western what it is. It’s all about the big sky and the ride up and the ride out,